I
am an aquatic ecologist with an interest in studying the factors
responsible for controlling the distribution and abundance of
planktonic organisms found in lakes and ponds. My research interests fall into three main areas:

Assessing the potential impacts of environmental change on aquatic communities

Understanding the factors that influence community responses to environmental stressors

Understanding the impact of dispersal and colonization processes on the distribution and abundance of plankton species

I use a mix of field experiments, synoptic surveys, and time series analyses to test and refine hypotheses.

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of
Biological and Environmental Sciences at California University of
Pennsylvania. I teach General Zoology, Experimental Design and
Analysis, and Contemporary Issues in Biology.

I am currently involved in research projects that are documenting the
diversity of plankton in Pennsylvania Mountain Woodland areas,
examining the influence of climate change on plankton in lakes on the
Great Plains, and assessing the availability of planktonic food
sources for threatened Paddlefish populations in the Allegheny River.

I
conducted my postdoctoral research
at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesisat the University of California Santa Barbara. My supervisor at NCEAS
was Dr. Stephanie Hampton. My
postdoctoral research evaluated the effects of climate change on endemic
plankton communities in one of the world’s largest lakes: Lake Baikal,
Siberia. I used a unique, 60-year plankton data set to analyze
long-term changes in Lake Baikal's plankton communities.

I completed my Ph.D. in the Department of Biology at Queen's
University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
My advisor was Professor Shelley
Arnott, and my research examined the factors that control the response of freshwater
zooplankton communities to environmental stressors. I used
zooplankton communities in Boreal Shield lakes recovering from
anthropogenic acidification as a model system for this research. While
past research focused predominantly on local factors (water chemistry,
biotic interactions) as the main determinants of zooplankton community
structure, my Ph.D. research demonstrated that landscape-level
processes, such as dispersal, also play an important role.

I conducted my M.Sc. research at the Great Lakes
Institute for Environmental Research at
the University of Windsor, in Windsor, Ontario. My advisor there was
Professor Hugh MacIsaac and
my research focused on controlling the spread of nonindigenous (exotic)
species via ships' ballast water. As part of my M.Sc. research I
conducted laboratory and ship-based experiments that tested the role of
ballast water exchange in preventing the introduction of invasive
species. This work influenced the development of policy for ballast
management in the Great Lakes due to its inclusion in several policy
reports such as the US National Research Council report on Great Lakes
Shipping Trade and Aquatic Invasive Species.
I also contributed to literature reviews on invasive species in the
Great Lakes basin and the use of genetic tools to identify the
geographic sources of these species.